AAP to move resolution seeking to declare ’84 riots as genocide

The AAP wants that the state assembly should pass the resolution on the lines of the one passed by the Ontario provincial parliament in Canada in April this year describing the 1984 riots as ‘genocide’.

In the forthcoming budget session, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will move a resolution demanding that the Punjab assembly pass a resolution declaring the 1984 anti-Sikh riots as ‘genocide’. A decision in this regard was taken at a meeting of senior AAP leaders held here Friday and attended by the Leader of Opposition, H S Phoolka, Bholath MLA Sukhpal Khaira and Kharar MLA Kanwar Sandhu.

The AAP wants that the state assembly should pass the resolution on the lines of the one passed by the Ontario provincial parliament in Canada in April this year describing the 1984 riots as ‘genocide’.

It has also been decided that the party will move another resolution asking for all documents pertaining to Operation Blue Star to be made public. Speaking to The Indian Express, Khaira said it had been 33 years since the storming of Golden Temple took place and it was time that the documentation relating to the operation is put in the public domain.

The party will also move an adjournment motion the issue of the continuing suicides by the farmers in the state and a call attention motion on the alleged involvement of the Irrigation and Power Minister, Rana Gurjeet Singh in the sand mine auction. It was also decided at the meeting that two call attention motions would also be raised in the session focusing on the usurping of shamlat land in panchayats by influential politicians instead of giving the land to Dalits and the question of how the pistol used by Bhagat Singh was moved from Punjab to Indore.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Phoolka said that the two call attention motions would be moved by Kanwar Sandhu while another motion on Rana Gurjeet would be moved by Sukhpal Khaira. “The issue of farmer suicides is an important one because everyday one or two farmers are ending their lives because the Congress has failed to implement its promise of loan waiver. We are demanding that till the loan waiver comes through even the payment of the loan installments should be paid by the government,” he said.

The Leader of opposition added that the issue of Bhagat Singh’s pistol is also important because it should be investigated that how a pistol which was a property of the Punjab government was allowed to be moved to a Border Security Force (BSF) training establishment in Indore. The pistol has now been brought back into Punjab and is in the custody of the BSF’s Punjab Frontier headquarters in Jalandhar.